On May 2, we published a gear guide that features Keith Thompson’s insights about how, when, and where he employs a marabou jig to inveigle smallmouth bass in rivers. As we worked together on that gear guide, Thompson, who resides in Wiconisco, Pennsylvania, and regularly fishes the Susquehanna River, said that we should work on a similar piece about the effectiveness of the hair jig. He noted that the marabou jig’s prime time stretches from Jan. 1 to April 30, and then the hair jig replaces it marabou brethren.
To substantiate his initial observations about the hair jig, Thompson emailed a report about his April 30 outing on the Susquehanna River with Josh Hartman of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Hartman is the proprietor of Hollywood Hairjigs. And Hartman is fond of saying: “Raised on the banks of the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania, we’re a breed of fishermen bringing back the art of jigging.”
And on Hartman’s and Thompson’s April 30 outing, the art of using a hair jig ultimately paid some handsome dividends.
In his report, Thompson wrote that their outing commenced at 2:00 p.m. The water temperature was 63 degrees. The river level was about 5 1/2 feet.
The first area that they fished is a locale that Thompson and his friend Brent Wolfe of Lykens, Pennsylvania, call “Jerkbait Alley,” which is an area that might yield one smallmouth bass, but on the next the next outing, it might yield nearly a hundred of them. Because the water temperature was 63 degrees, Thompson and Hartman thought the smallmouth bass would be extremely easy to catch on lipless crankbaits, jerkbaits, swimbaits, and billed crankbaits, but they were wrong. In fact, they failed to catch a smallmouth bass.
Thompson caught the first smallmouth bass around 4:00 p.m., and it was caught on a Z-Man Fishingg Products’ The Deal Finesse T.R.D. affixed to a black 1/15-ounce Z-Man’s Finesse ShroomZ jig.
Shortly after that first donnybrook of the outing, Hartman began catching smallmouth bass on a 1/4-ounce Hollywood Hairjigs’ Bedhead Ned rig with a Hollywood Hairjigs’ green-pumpkin Wasp Tail as a trailer. Hartman’s catches provoked Thompson to switch to an 1/8-ounce Hollywood Hairjigs’ Bedhead Ned rig affixed to a Z-Man’s The Deal Finesse T.R.D., and it paid immediate dividends.
Hartman and Thompson consider the Hollywood Hairjigs’ Bedhead Ned rig to be a hair jig, but it does not possess as much hair as the traditional hair jig, and it has a mushroom-style head rather than a ball or round head. It has a hair collar that is situated behind the head of the jig and between the soft-plastic trailer that is affixed to the shank of the hook. Besides a Z-Man’s Finesse T.R.D., Thompson will use a Hollywood Hairjigs’ Wasp Tail as a soft-plastic trailer. The Wasp Tail resembles the classic Mann Bait Company’s Stingray Grub.
The smallmouth bass that they caught on the Bedhead Ned rigs were abiding in an area that Thompson described as “a small runoff of the main stem of the river created by a small island that is close to the shore.” It is about 50 feet wide at its widest point, and it runs at a slower pace than the normal pace of the river. The depth of the water was about five feet.
He and Hartman fished about a 40-yard stretch of this area for about 30 minutes, and they caught smallmouth bass almost at a hand-over-fist pace. But to their chagrin, most of them were small specimens; he estimated that the biggest one might have weighed 2 1/2 pounds.
As the evening hours were waning, Thompson wanted to fish one more spot. He described it as an area that most anglers “cruise right by not paying it much…
